Sunday, May 29, 2011

US President Obama's destructive influence on the American economy and on the US government's credibility around the world, appears to come from within the man and his circle of influence. From the moment of Obama's nomination as his party's candidate for presidential office, a milieu of confusion and uncertainty has grown over the direction and fate of the world's only superpower.

When Barack Obama took office, the official normal money supply of the United States was about $1.1-trillion. The $3-trillion in federal budget deficits that have been run up since then have largely, technically, escaped the money supply, though accretions have almost doubled the official total, an unheard of rate of growth (about 40% annualized) in a hard-currency country. About 70% of this debt has been paid by the issuance of bonds to the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve, a subsidiary of the United States government. Whatever the balance sheets say, this has produced the effect of a money-supply increase, which has brought pump-priming to a level of over-achievement not seen since Noah felt the compulsion to build an ark. And the annual trillion-dollar deluge is forecast to continue for a decade.

The world’s reserve currency, the fabled vehicle of the “faith and credit of the United States,” is now virtual money — a symbol for all the other massive problems afflicting the U.S. economy. _NP

The incompetence of the Obama government is being felt internationally on all fronts -- from economic markets to the global balance of power. There are plenty of problems originating outside the US:

The world economy is losing strength halfway through the year as high oil prices and fallout from Japan’s natural disaster and Europe’s debt woes take their toll. _

, but any response that the Obama crew is able to scrape up is invariably inadequate and couterproductive.

Obama's expensive economic stimulus programs have been revealed as corrupt payback schemes to supporters. But the wealth transfer from the productive classes to the corrupt and non-productive classes -- friends and supporters of Obama -- seem to stretch out indefinitely into the future. Boss Tweed can only be Boss Tweed. He and his gang know no other way to govern but the way of corruption and thuggishness.

Meanwhile, in the heart of many of America's largest cities, the violence among Obama's most dedicated supporters only grows. Here are America's ten most deadly cities -- strongholds of Obama supporters:

The number of violent crimes committed in Flint increased for all categories considered for this list between 2009 and 2010. Perhaps most notably, the number of murders in the city increased from 36 to 53. This moves the city from having the seventh highest rate of homicide to the second highest. The number of aggravated assaults increased from 1,529 to 1,579, a rate of 14.6 assaults per 1,000 residents, placing the city in the No. 1 rank for rate of assaults. Flint police chief Alvern Lock stated late last year that he believed the city's violence stemmed from drugs and gangs. Flint has a relatively small median income of about $27,000 per household. The city also has a poverty rate of 36.2%.

The city crippled the most in America's post-industrial era is almost certainly Detroit. The Motor City has suffered from high rates of unemployment, homelessness, and crime. The city has one of the ten highest rates for three of the four types of violent crime identified by the FBI. Detroit has the sixth highest murder rate, the fifth highest robbery rate, and the second highest rate of aggravated assault. In 2005, a major reorganization of the city's police department took place after a federal investigation identified inefficiencies within the system. According to an article in The United Press, opponents of Detroit Mayor David Bing called for further intervention by the Justice Department in several shootings that occurred last year.

Violent crime in St. Louis fell dramatically between 2009 and 2010, and has decreased since 2007. Despite this, crime rates remain extremely high compared with other cities. In 2010, the city's murder rate and rate of aggravated assault were each the third worst in the country. With regards to both violent and nonviolent crime, St. Louis was rated the most dangerous city based on FBI data released six months ago. As of December 2010, the murder rate in St. Louis was 6.3 times that of the state of Missouri. The city's gunshot murder rate for residents between 10 to 19 years old is also the second highest in the country, behind only New Orleans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New Haven has historically had the highest rate of violent crime on the east coast. The impoverished, crime-ridden parts of the city stand in stark contrast to affluent Fairfield county to the West, and elite Yale University, which is located within the city itself. The number of murders in the city doubled last year. New Haven has the eighth highest rate of robbery and the fourth highest rate of assault in the U.S. The New Haven Police Department is considering adding cameras at every intersection in one of the neighborhoods where shootings are the most common.

Memphis has high rates for all the violent crimes considered for 24/7 Wall St.'s rankings. It has the sixth highest rate in the country. Incidents of violent crime in the city dropped slightly less than 15% between 2009 and 2010 though. Memphis Mayor AC Wharton attributes this decrease to Operation Safe Community, a citywide plan developed in 2005. The plan consists of a number of strategies meant to increase crime prevention, through toughening punishments for criminals, and the effectiveness of the city's legal system, through changes such as expanding court programs so that they operate consistently and at full capacity.

Oakland's violent crime dropped about 5.5% between 2009 and 2010, from about 6,800 to 6,260. The city nevertheless has the tenth-highest rate of rape, the ninth-highest murder rate, and the second highest robbery rate in the country. In 2010, there were 7.12 robberies for every 1,000 Oakland residents. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Mayor Jean Quan has attempted to combat break-ins and theft by creating programs to keep potential wrongdoers off the streets by starting late-night basketball programs. It it unclear if these policies have worked.

Little Rock has one of the highest rates of aggravated assault and forcible rape in the country. Since 2009, reported assaults has increased while reported forcible rapes have decreased. According to Lt. Terry Hastings of the Little Rock Police Department, quoted by local station FOX16, Little Rock was "down almost 12 percent across the board on crime" in 2010. This may be accurate for many crimes, and especially nonviolent crimes, however, according to FBI data, violent crime increased from 2009 to 2010.

Baltimore had the eighth-highest rate of violent crime per capita in 2010 among cities with 100,000 or more residents, and the second-highest east of the Mississippi. The number of violent crimes has dropped slightly in the past year -- from 9,600 to 9,300 -- but the Maryland city has some of the worst rates of dangerous offenses in the country. This includes the tenth-worst aggravated assault rate -- and the fourth-worst murder rate in the country.

Rockford has unusually high violent crime rates for a city of its size. Most notably, the city has the fourth highest rate of aggravated assault in the country, with 10.5 cases for every 1,000 citizens in 2010. During the same period, 20 murders occurred, almost double the number in 2000. Quoted by the Rockford Register Star in 2007, Winnebago County Sheriff Dick Meyers said that he believed the city's "location worked against [it,]" as Rockford receives traffic from the drug markets in Madison, Chicago, and Milwaukee, resulting in heightened rates of violence.

With a jobless rate of 18.4%, up from 18.1% a year ago, Stockton, California has one of the worst unemployment problems in the country. The huge percentage of unemployed residents may have contributed to horrible crime rates in the city, which is located 40 miles east of Oakland and San Francisco. Stockton was rated one of the most miserable cities to live in the country by Forbes in March, 2010. Violent crime was one of the chief measurements for its ranking. Of the 267 cities with populations over 100,000, Stockton has the 27th highest number of murders per 1,000 people and the 12th most aggravated assaults per 1,000. Last year, recognizing the crime problems in the city, the state temporarily diverted hundreds of California _MostDangerousUSCities

The rot begins at the very top, and spreads into most government bureaucracies, media offices, academic institutions, labour union centres, corporate personnel offices, courtrooms, law enforcement bureaus, and virtually every institution of the nation.

You may want to think about what would have to be done to bring positivity and productivity back to the productive classes of the US. Because when the US is strong, the rest of the world has some hope for improvement. With the US under Obama in danger of collapse in many areas, hope is becoming rather scarce. What do you do?

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Carjacking gangs often employ the bump and run technique in which thieves in one car pull up behind an unsuspecting driver and bump the driver s car. When the driver gets out to inspect the damage, the thieves forcibly take control of the car. _Carjacking

The highway crime commonly referred to as the "bump and run" is becoming more common in metropolitan areas across the US. Known in Los Angeles since 1987, and in Miami since 1993, the crime is becoming especially common recently in Palm Beach, Florida, and in Denver, Colorado.

Just as in traditional carjacking, most perpetrators appear to be of African descent, and capable of violence. Highways have always been places of potential risk, but this particular crime involves the use of multiple tonne vehicles as both weapons and diversions.

More:

The suspects are typically driving a stolen vehicle when they bump the back of the victim's vehicle. When the victims get out to check for damage, they are robbed at gunpoint of their cell phones, purses and other valuables, investigators said.

Many times it happens at night on quiet residential streets, where there is little or no traffic and few witnesses, Olsen said.

In some cases, suspects either forced their victims to drive to an ATM to withdraw money or the victims were confronted while using ATMs, detectives said. Police are urging people to be aware of their surroundings, especially while using ATMs.

If involved in a minor rear-end bump, police say, people should drive to a well-lit and populated area and call 911 immediately. _OrlandoSunSentinel

News media in the US typically avoid mentioning the ethnic identity of perpetrators when the crime involves black on white aggression or violence. But citizens can better look out for themselves if they are apprised of the nature of the crime with as much detail as possible.

Most intelligent Americans are aware that a low-level declaration of war by a subset of black Americans against all white Americans has been in force since the middle 1960s. This black-on-white crime wave began about the same time that the last holdouts among American states finally gave equal legal rights to African Americans, and about the time that government Affirmative Action special preferences for blacks were put into law.

The timing for the simmering US race war of blacks against whites has to do with the creation of a mass culture of resentment within the black community. Both popular media and ethnic media were involved in pumping this resentment to violent levels, and much of the black community -- including many black religious organisations -- jumped on the bandwagon.

At this point in time -- with a somewhat "black" US president who helps fuel the black resentment machine with many of his public and private statements and postures -- there is no reason to expect black against white crime to diminish. Rather it is up to individuals who wish to avoid this quasi-institutionalised crime to position themselves in locations where their risk is minimised. And always, always be aware of your surroundings.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

A person's politics and his religion are two aspects of his philosophy, which reflect his personality in many ways. If a person's philosophy borrows too heavily from the herd, or the "zeitgeist," it is likely the person is not worth knowing, since there is little original about him. The inquisition is the enforcement mechanism for a society's dominant memes -- the means for maintaining control. It is only the escapees from the inquisition who are worth knowing.

Concerning a recent escapee from the leftist asylum, playwrite David Mamet:

...[Mamet] agreed to write an essay on the play’s politics for the Village Voice. In the essay Mamet confessed that many of his previous political beliefs now struck him as reflexive and unthinking: The country that existed in his once-fevered liberal imagination—a dystopia crippled by crises that required the immediate deployment of the federal government—bore little resemblance to the country in which he actually lived, where people interacted smoothly in the marketplace to their mutual benefit. He had come to realize that corporations were good for providing the necessities of life. The “Big Bad Military” of his youthful fancy was, he discovered, an organization built on courage and honor.

For the moment, he told Voice readers, he was searching for “a human understanding of the political process . . . in which I believe I may be succeeding.”

Voice editors hyped Mamet’s piece with an attention getting headline, “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal.’ ” The essay was much milder than its title. It was the work of a man in mid-conversion. _TWS

Mamet is different from his former leftist asylum inmates only in his honesty and willingness to see the world from different points of view -- as if testing them for how well the POVs fit the outside world. Most dogmatists and true believers are unable to step outside their own deepest beliefs in this way, and so they are doomed to remain mired within their own dysfunctional cage of beliefs.

One of Mamet’s favorite books has been Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, published during the First World War by the British social psychologist Wilfred Trotter, inventor of the term “herd instinct.”

“Trotter says the herd instinct in an animal is stronger even than the preservation of life,” Mamet said. “So I was watching the [2008] debates. My liberal friends would spit at the mention of Sarah Palin’s name. Or they would literally mime the act of vomiting. We’re watching the debates and one of my friends pretends to vomit and says, ‘I have to leave the room.’ I thought, oh my god, this is Trotter! This is the reaction of the herd instinct. When a sheep discovers a wolf in the fold, it vomits to ward off the attacker. It’s a sign that their position in the herd is threatened.”

Mamet runs into the herd instinct every day.

“I’ve given galleys of The Secret Knowledge to some friends. They say, ‘I’m scared to read it.’ I say, ‘Why should you be afraid to read something?’

“What are they afraid of? They’re afraid of losing their ability to stay in the herd. That’s what I found in myself. It can be wrenching when you start to think away from the herd.”

Mamet’s disdain for consensus, for received wisdom of any kind, has been evident in nearly every aspect of his career. _TWS

Clearly Mamet knows what he is talking about. The transition out of the herd is truly wrenching. And if one is compelled by one's profession to mix with the herd on a daily basis, the emotional threat one represents to the herd is often written on the faces of herd members.

It is unfortunate that Andrew Ferguson entitled his piece on Mamet, Converting Mamet, and refers in the piece to "the conversion" of Mamet. Conversion is too often no better than escaping from one prison into another. Rather the story should be about "the escape of Mamet." Freedom is quite different from true believerhood. No two free men think exactly alike, whereas the inquisition -- or Political Correctness, if you will -- is installed to guarantee that on important issues (the ever changing talking points), correct-thinking persons will think the same thoughts.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

That seems to be one of the messages coming out of the latest US census report. Apparently women who go to college and postpone childbearing are considerably less likely to ever have children, and less likely to ever marry.

Fertility researcher Karen Guzzo, an assistant professor of sociology at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, says many women "are probably not choosing never to have children, so much as … they're not forming relationships because they're investing in their education and careers."

...•Women with a college degree are experiencing what the bureau calls a "delayer boom" — they're having babies at later ages than other women and having fewer children overall. _USAToday

Here are other fascinating findings from the census report:

Women with less than a high school education had three times as many births as women with at least a bachelor's degree. Eighty-three percent of women 25 to 34 with less than a high school education had given birth at twice the percentage recorded by women with at least a bachelor's degree (42 percent).

...-- By age 40 to 44, white non-Hispanic women (20.6 percent) were more likely to be childless than Hispanic women (12.4 percent), black women (17.2 percent) and Asian women (15.9 percent). Black women were also more likely to be childless than Hispanic women. Asian women did not differ from black or Hispanic women. _ChicagoTribune

Women who narrow their focus to just their careers often unwittingly fritter away any chance for motherhood they may have had.

I know...that not being a mother means there is a part of me which remains unused, a love that will be forever unexpressed. I know that what any mother describes as the most profound love she has ever known is, to me, a locked door — there is so much love I will never be able to give, wisdom and understanding I cannot share, shelter and solace I cannot provide.

...My regrets will always linger. My life is a poorer place for not having children, and I am less of a woman for not being a mother. There is a vast realm of experience and growth I will never know. _DailyMail

Women who have blindly shut themselves off from motherhood in their fertile youth often try to project an attitude of indifference and lack of regret to the outside world. But inside herself, she must face the truth of the things she will never know, and the love she will never share.

On the larger scale, for the western world this means that too many her most intelligent women will never have children. Less intelligent and uneducated women will take their place in the birthing wards, and their likely less intelligent children will fill the classrooms, playgrounds, and public spaces of the future.

The US has its poor and uneducated Mexican immigrants, Europe has its poor and uneducated immigrants from MENA, SS Africa, and Asia. The demographic displacement plays out sans fanfare or announcement, to general public indifference.

But the longterm fallout will be severe, as the average population IQ sinks below the level necessary for a complex society to sustain its infrastructure.

Saturday, May 07, 2011

SF Gate says blacks are leaving San Francisco faster than any other major US city, citing “substandard schools, a lack of affordable housing and the dearth of jobs and black culture”. _BelmontClub

Modern black American culture is one of resentment, entitlement, unrealistic expectations, and simmering hatred and violence toward a European infrastructure that occasionally breaks out into full-scale insurrection.

But Wretchard of Belmont Club has happened upon a very interesting US demographic phenomenon, which may have long reaching repercussions:

...will demographic trends coupled with mobility eventually mean the end of identity politics based on racial lines? When does a black “multicultural” candidate essentially become just another politician in which ethnic identity means little or nothing in comparison with his economic and policy positions? Will the Democratic “Big Tent” need re-architecturing? What will the impact of these shifts be on the Republican Party? Granted that these are long-term trends, what will these developments mean for 2012? _BelmontClub

If blacks are fleeing San Francisco for the city's lack of "black culture", why are so many blacks running away from areas of high proportionate black population toward areas with lower proportions of blacks?

Increasingly blacks are moving to places with small black populations. Just 2 percent of the black population growth in the last decade occurred in counties that have traditionally been black population centers, while 20 percent has occurred in counties where only a tiny fraction of the population had been black. _NYT

Smarter and more capable blacks are looking for opportunity -- not "black culture." To a large extent, it is "black culture" which is dragging much of the black population down and promoting underachievement on top of underachievement.

As for San Francisco, the city's fringe leftist governments have been destroying the livability of the peninsula for medium income persons for decades now. Why is it that the mainstream press only takes notice when an "officially sanctioned disadvantaged group" is affected?

San Francisco's black population has dropped faster than that of any other large U.S. city's. It went from 13.4 percent in 1970 to an estimated 6.5 percent in 2005, according to the census. Nationally, African Americans make up 12.1 percent of the population.

...In San Francisco, the number of African Americans in very-low-income households has increased, the number of black-owned businesses has declined, and African Americans have the lowest home ownership rates, according to the report.

About 24 percent of black people in the city are living in homes that need severe or moderate repairs, and African Americans make up nearly half of the residents in public housing. _SFChron

Al Fin demographers are predicting severe turmoil for SF Bay area political power structures within the next decade or two, due to a general breakdown of economic viability across leftist-administered cities, states, and counties in the US. When the economy crashes, the burghers must often sit down with persons of questionable politics but verifiable capital and job creation skills.

Give California and the Bay area another ten years or so of self-destruction before they reach the end of their manic plunge into an idological wasteland.

When a society's or subculture's average IQ drops to 85 and below, complex systems simply cannot function. Insufficient people of intelligence are available to plan, administer, maintain, and operate complex systems -- unless a significant "market dominant minority" of higher IQ happens to be living within the nation or society.

In low-IQ democracies, thuggish and corrupt elected leaders tend to drive away the only hope the society has -- higher IQ minorities capable of running the complex systems which a well functioning city or country requires.

Cities such as Detroit provide a microcosm of Idiocracy within the larger US society. But parts of Las Vegas and most other US cities can provide the same dire example of willful lawlessness and inability to consider tomorrow's consequences when taking today's actions.

This is the attitude that low IQ populations which are poorly raised without adequate role models and character training (executive function) bring to the future -- your future, as likely as not.

This is why intelligent people who can see where the flood is heading will have already started making their plans.